AOL Buying Huffington Post; Arianna Goes Corporate

No wonder Huff Post has gotten rid of Michael Moore and other ‘fringe left’ writers. According to the story below, AOL, formerly of mega-corporation TimeWarnerAOL fame, and one of the worst, most crooked Internet service providers out there, is acquiring the top-rated Internet news site, and the services of founder Arianna Huffington, for $315 million. Does anyone really believe Huff Post will be any more progressive than new-hire Howard Fineman in the future? (Not that Fineman’s that bad, but he’s a classic DC Insider Liberal from the word ‘go.’) Appropriately, the fetid deal between Arianna and AOL boss Tim Armstrong was finalized at yesterday’s bizarre glitz-ridden corporate Super Bowl extravaganza in Dallas, Texas. As former GE CEO and father of job outsourcing Jack Welch knew: If you can’t run the liberals out of the business, just buy them off. But who suspected the already-wealthy Arianna was for sale? Coming on the heels of Keith Olbermann’s abrupt removal from the TV machine, if I were conspiracy-minded, I might detect one here to rid the Corporate Powers-That-Be of their most popular and potent critics.

Online company AOL Inc. is buying online news hub Huffington Post in a $315 million deal that represents a bold bet on the future of online news.

The deal announced early Monday puts a high-profile exclamation mark on a series of acquisitions and strategic moves engineered by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in an effort to reshape a fallen Internet icon. AOL was once the king of dial-up online access known for its ubiquitous CD-ROMs and “You’ve got mail” greeting in its inboxes.

Perhaps just as important as picking up a news site and ranks as one of the top 10 current events and global news sites, AOL will be adding Huffington Post co-founder and media star Arianna Huffington to its management team as part of the deal.